On Guitars

If there is a debate on whether to spend more money on a guitar or an amp, I am solidly in the pro-guitar camp. The guitar is the musical instrument, the object that I connect with, that my fingers really touch. The amp just makes it louder. The amp is not unimportant, but has basically always come in second place as far as I'm concerned.

Early in my playing career, I got stuck on the idea that there are four classic rock guitars. Aside from being temporarily sidetracked during my teens, I have striven to get to own those four for the better part of my musical life, and felt extremely blessed to finally be able to do so in 2012.

In my experience, there are four reasons why I want a particular guitar:

Even though the four guitars I refer to above were originally designed between 1950 and 1960, I'm not much of a vintage aficionado. Vintage guitars are cool to look at in photos. The battle scars give them a deep sense of history, of having been loved and played and brought to all these shows. But I don't want to own them more than I want to wear somebody's old broken-in shoes. What I enjoy are the basic designs of the guitars. As for model and year, I'm much more about the more modern implementations of the classic designs, that add new and handy features, and go to certain lengths to correct the various ergonomic missteps on the originals. I prefer buying new guitars and then overseeing the weathering process myself.

Fender Telecaster

When I see a Telecaster, I cannot help but think that out of all the time that Leo spent designing this guitar, surely he cannot have dedicated more than five minutes to how the thing was going to look. It's not much more than a bandsawn plank of wood, with a roughly hewn guitar neck bolted onto it, with two pickups just to get a sound out of it. The pickguard is cut off halfway, then there's the chrome plate with the controls just sticking out there, and the weird ashtray with bridge saddles and the rear pickup. It is surprisingly heavy and the absence of comfort contouring makes it quite uncomfortable to play. In sharp contrast to the curvaceous Stratocaster, the Tele comes off as positively plain and workmanlike.

It is exactly those features that make the Telecaster so desirable. It just oozes attitude, speaking plainly, if not bluntly. That bridge pickup is simply amazing: pure, assertive, bright, spanky, and sits just right in any mix. The Tele doesn't help you in the least. It showcases your articulation and technique, warts and all. You'd better keep your chops up or you'll be seriously humbled. At the same time, if you coax it just right, you will be able to get sounds out of it that are both subtle and delicate.

I have been guilty of dismissing the Tele as a lesser or unfinished Strat, but that is deeply unfair, and I soon learned better. As soon as I got one, it became clear that I didn't miss any of the Strat-specific sounds or features when I was playing the Tele. But I did miss a thing or two when playing the Strat.

My Telecaster is a maple-neck 2008 American Standard with an ash body in 2-tone sunburst. If it's not my most beautiful guitar, then it's right up there. It is also just about my best-sounding guitar unplugged. There is a firmness and chewiness to the midrange that makes it a wonderful experience to play without an amp. Most importantly, this is a guitar that just delivers. I haven't done a bad gig with it, and I've never picked it up and not nailed the take. It just delivers, time after time.

The only modification I've made is to switch out the pickups for noiseless DiMarzios, the Area T set. At first, I even went so far as to equip it with a Super Distortion T in the bridge. For the sort of cover gigs I was doing at the time, it was a perfect combo, as the hotter bridge pickup allowed a huge range of expressions. But once I got out of that, the pickup got changed into something more traditional and I haven't looked back since.

Fender Stratocaster

The Strat wasn't the first guitar I desired, and it's neck to neck with the Les Paul for the status as my favorite. But it was the first electric that I owned and there's only been four years of my playing career when I haven't owned at least one. If I could only pick one type of guitar to play for the rest of my life, this is probably it. It really is perfect.

I like to think of the Strat as a 21st-century instrument that accidentally fell into the 1950s. It is a marvelous piece of design, like it's somehow the pinnacle of 70 years of electric guitar evolution rather than one of the first models ever made. Somehow, it doesn't seem to age, it looks as contemporary now as it did back then. How many other consumer products have been essentially unchanged since 1954? Outside of the music industry, none come to mind.

It's not just good looks either. Nothing on the model is form over function. It is a supremely comfortable guitar. No matter if I sit or stand, it just melds into my body and just about disappears. Changing strings and making adjustments is a breeze, and even more drastic modifications are dead easy, as the entire pickguard, with all the electronics, can be lifted right out of the body without even removing the strings.

Both my Strats are from what I consider to be the golden age of the American Standard, when the line had the perfect combination of a vintage look and modern features. The yellow one is a 1996 model in Vintage White, with a rosewood fretboard. It was a custom order that the other guy didn't pick up because he had ordered it with a maple neck. I would agree, because I prefer the look of a maple neck on a Fender (hardly any other guitar, though). But this axe happens to be one of the few that actually looks better with the rosewood.

My blue Strat is technically an American Series instrument, made in 2002, finished in Sonic Blue and with a maple neck. It was basically a substitute for my old blue Yngwie Strat that I got back in 1991 and stupidly traded away the year after that. It is the perfect compromise because I wasn't really after the Yngwie features. I just think that that color and that neck represent the most beautiful combination in the entire Fender range. The top coat has yellowed a bit in 20+ years, so it is turning more green than blue. But it's still a very pleasing color, it's a maple-neck Strat, and it has one of the nicest necks in my collection.

The yellow Strat has been a veritable test bed for pickup configurations, but about ten years ago I finally landed in a setup that I just love. It has three DiMarzio Area 58 stacked humbuckers, a wonderful pickup that is bright and delicate and with just the right amount of Strat snappiness. The blue one still has the stock pickups, but I'm seriously considering getting a new pickguard for it, in the HH configuration, probably with DiMarzio Super Distortion and PAF Pro full-size humbuckers, for those classic 80s tones. I really want a Strat in every color, but realistically, if I have to have two, then they should at least differ somewhat from each other like my Les Pauls do.

Gibson Les Paul

I have seldom felt more stumped than the first time I sat down with a Les Paul. It was small, thick, heavy and unbalanced. After playing Strats for all those years, the Les Paul felt like its opposite in many respects: arched top, strings far from the body, angled neck and an even more angled headstock. I was confused and lost and had to fight off a distinct sense of disappointment.

That didn't last long. I soon plugged it into a Marshall combo, and had a completely life-altering experience. I had no idea that I could play that well, with such gusto and fluidity. From that moment on, I knew that I just had to have a Les Paul. But at the same time, I couldn't just get one. I got the extremely silly notion that I had to deserve a Les Paul. Obviously that's the invention of a child's mind, but as with many such things, it finds ways to keep resonating even as one approaches middle age.

The first Les Paul I bought was this black 1990 Studio model that I found used in 2001. Getting it was one of those magical moments, definitely one of the happiest days of my musical life. Since then I've played it on countless recordings, done a number of gigs and spent thousands of hours practicing and noodling on it at home. It is truly an extension of my body, my number one guitar, and it's never let me down. I know that if all else fails, I can just grab my black Les Paul and nail the take. Sometimes I'll deliberately avoid it in order to not make things too easy.

There is not much on my black Studio that is still original. The pickup rings have been cracked for years and are overdue for replacement, and I have already done so with the pickup switch ring and knob, the jack plug plate, and the tuners. The pickguard is still around, but I lost the mounting screws for it many years ago. In 2011, I had a tech swap the original pickups for DiMarzio PAF 36th Anniversary humbuckers with black-chromed covers. I have been very happy with the sound, and the black chrome makes the guitar look menacing as hell.

My second Les Paul is a 2016 60s Tribute in Honeyburst. I consider it more of a mounting system for two P-90 pickups. The P-90 is simply amazing. Both pickups together through a Fender-style amp might very well be the nicest clean sound I have ever played with. Then I discovered along the way that putting some dirt on the bridge pickup and turning up to 11 is just glorious. Two things immediately became obvious: the P-90 might have been invented back in '46, but it is not going anywhere, and: heavy metal was in fact invented on a P-90.

I was always into sunburst Standards or black or white Customs. For a while, my black Studio felt like a stopgap measure, like something I could cut my teeth on until I get a "real" Gibson. I got out of that. I would sit down and play the aforementioned upper-echelon models, and come away slightly bummed, like, "is that all there is?" None of the more expensive Les Pauls had the slick black ebony fretboard of my Studio, or the wonderfully silky control knobs.

Gibson SG

I have always enjoyed the Gibson SG because it looks cool as hell, especially in black. It is perhaps no accident that it was an SG that helped invent heavy metal. It seemed predestined to achieve something like that, given the sharp horns and the attitude. At the same time, an SG definitely does not look out of place on a regular rock or blues stage. It is a chameleon.

Another reason why I've always had a soft spot for the Gibson SG is that it is specifically not a Les Paul. It's a little more obscure, not nearly as cliché, and, perhaps most importantly, has never sold for rockstar prices. More to the point, it is slightly more practical than its older sister, with the same pickups and electronics in a much nimbler package. It has more fret access than frets, a bigger body, and doesn't look quite as ridiculous on someone who's closer to seven than six feet tall. My two Gibsons have this yin/yang thing going, where I lean heavily on the Les Paul for studio work, but always bring the SG to a rehearsal if I don't specifically need a low B-string.

My SG is a black 2005 Standard that I bought used in 2012. It has remained stock ever since then. There are times when I want to give it the DiMarzio treatment as well, but I very much like the way it sounds. If it ain't broke, and so on. Because of the thinner body and no maple cap, it has more attitude than the Les Paul. I especially like the flutey, delicate tone of the neck pickup.

It might just be a setup issue, but I have found that my SG is a lot less tolerant to rough playing than the Les Paul. Indeed, the lighter the touch, the easier it is to make it sing, which is something I have to be really mindful of. The rather tubby D-shaped neck also bothered me for quite a while, until I got my seven-string, whereupon all my sixes felt really small and nimble.

PRS Guitars

When I first got to know Paul Reed Smith guitars, mostly from ads in magazines, they were so completely out of my league that it was almost ridiculous. I could just as well have looked at an Omega Speedmaster or a Leica. I dismissed them completely, moved on, and was perfectly happy. A few years later, still at a fairly impressionable age, I got to try one briefly at a local studio. The experience completely blew me away. I thought that my then-new Fender was smooth. That PRS was next-level. I couldn't even put my finger on what it was, since I just didn't know enough about guitars at the time, but it was probably some kind of gut-level reaction to the sustain and resonance, possibly coupled with the buttery-smooth feel of the neck and fretwire. I do remember the rather unremarkable solid finish, so the top wood aesthetics didn't figure into it.

Getting to know a broader selection of the PRS range has been beneficial from several aspects. One, the company as a whole has been a refreshing change of pace from what I've seen from the big-business guitar makers recently. Two, I have come to terms with the fact that I'll likely never own a US-made PRS, which has actually helped me clarify something at long last. What I can afford and what I am comfortable paying are two different things. Last but not least, the PRS SE range proved beyond all reasonable doubt that I can no longer afford to ignore import guitars the way I used to. They have got really good in the past decade, and by the way PRS is not the only example of that.

There are a couple of very nice models in the PRS assortment, chief among which is the original gangster: the Custom 24. I have always been struck by the well-proportioned body, which somehow evokes both a Les Paul and a Strat. It is fairly light and comfortable, the dual humbuckers are right up my alley, with the push-pull coil-split being a nice bonus. The PRS headstock is distinct and elegant without making any compromises about functionality. On the whole, it appears like the design takes the best bits from the aforementioned guitars, adding a touch of its own while simultaneously rectifying many of the ergonomic drawbacks of the older designs.

I just don't own one. The reason is that my store went deep on the SE models right around the time I got the notion to maybe start checking out seven-strings. The SVN didn't appeal to me at the time, but instead I was recommended a 277 baritone that I took to inside of ten seconds or so. The guitar is a work of art. It is some kind of exotic-wood special edition with an ebony top that has to be seen to be believed. Also, it doesn't come with the usual humbuckers, but soapbar single-coils, and in contrast to the regular production 277 it has a chambered body with a classy-looking f-hole on the bass bout. I have spent an insane amount of time playing this guitar during the past couple of years.

After putting it through its paces thoroughly over the next couple of years, I eventually decided I needed a backup for it. Since the regular SVN had been discontinued by then, I had to compromise a bit and pick a signature guitar, but it worked out all right in the end. The Holcomb model that I wound up getting is the 2023 model, meaning that it has the slightly clearer pickups and a blue-burst finish that showcases the quilted maple top very nicely.

Acoustic Guitars

I don't play much acoustic guitar anymore, which is a crying shame. There is something pure and essential about fingerpicking a good steel-string. But the minute I started putting together an actual collection of electrics, and more importantly putting them through practice amps, the impetus for playing a lot of acoustic kind of disappeared.

I've also never been good at caring for my acoustics. Actually, it's on the level where I am kind of relieved that Sweden doesn't have instrument cruelty laws. I had to scrap my old 12-string Yamaha, because the Swedish winters basically killed it. I didn't realize that one shouldn't put an acoustic guitar six feet from an open balcony door in the middle of a Scandinavian winter.

If I had known that it was the lack of maintenance rather than the lack of quality that did my acoustics in, things would obviously have transpired quite differently. But as it happened, I learned something the hard way, and by the way also got to discover Taylor guitars in the process.

I currently own two Mexican-made Taylors: a six-string grand auditorium 214, and a 12-string dreadnought 150e. Both of these represent amazing tone, feel and build quality for the money. I think I tried out 50 different acoustics before narrowing it down to the 214. It wasn't the best one I tried, that distinction belongs to the Martin GPCPA-3, but in the end I decided that that extra sizzle in the top end wasn't worth more than twice the price. Especially since it was soon proven that even a better guitar didn't make me want to play more acoustic.